How Bashar al-Assad Became A Brutal Dictator

While the Syrian crisis continues captivates the world’s attention, I can’t help but wonder, “How did we get here?” At an early point in his presidency, Bashar al-Assad was seen as a reformer and a force of positive change in the Middle East. Now, evidence is mounting that Bashar is behind the chemical weapons attack, which killed 1,400 people just outside Damascus with the UN classifying the attack as ‘’a war crime’’. The Civil War has cost over 100,000 people their lives and has led to over 2 million refugees fleeing Syrian territory. How did this man develop into a brutal dictator? To fully understand, we must look into his past and uncover the Risk Factors that lead up to these atrocities.

I believe that much of Bashar’s predisposition for violence stems from his early childhood development and his family. Bashar al-Assad was the second son of Hafez and Anisa al-Assad. Hafez was the President of Syria for 3 decades and ruled severely and brutally. Throughout his life, Bashar’s father was emotionally absent from the family. In addition, Bashar’s brother Bassel treated his younger sibling with cruelty and bullying.

Another brother, Maher al-Assad, born 1968, is now commander of the Republican Guard and is known to be much more brutal than Bashar. He is described as moody, cruel and intellectually sharp (CNN, 2012). As the commander of the Republican Guard he has significant influence with his brother and is believed to be closely working with him in the ongoing battle to quell the rebellion.

Following his brother Bassel’s death in 1994, Bashar entered the military academy in preparation for becoming his father’s successor and achieved the rank of Colonel in the elite Republican Guard. In 1998, he took charge of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and in 2000 he became President of Syria. Initially, Bashar al-Assad was seen internationally as a potential reformer. But Bashar soon returned to the more repressive policies of his father and is believed to be heavily influenced by his mother and older sister.

In some parts of the Arab Muslim culture, one is never permitted to separate from their mother and hence she holds sway over the son's thinking and emotional life. Thus the son never learns how to express his feelings in appropriate ways. Given the mother’s dominant temperament and the father’s emotional absence and sadistic nature, Bashar grew up in unhealthy environment. This combination was a lethal brew that stifled the individualization process that heralds the onset of adulthood. This does not justify any of Bashar’s violent behavior – it merely helps to explain it.

Perhaps what is not very surprising is that Bashar shares many of the Risk Factors of other mass murders. Bashar grew up within a family that gained power and wealth through ruthlessness and violence (family history of violence). Much like in the Mafia, it became the family business and all family members were expected to fall in line (family supports aggression as a means to an end). It was the model set before them by his absent father and supported by their mother and the culture (environment supports use of aggression to get one’s needs met).

Bashar was the quieter sibling who was bullied and treated cruelly by one or more of his siblings (youth was bullied as a child). As president, he has been irreversibly influenced by his ruthless family members need for power and wealth, which would disappear should Bashar be removed from office. The al-Assad families upward mobility, should they lose their position, will be lost in a classic “have and have not” society (culture supports aggression as a means to an end).

It is clear that Bashar al-Assad’s upbringing and environment in which he was raised has had a significant impact on his development into the ruthless dictator that he is today. If we examine the childhoods, or what is known of them, of other dictators and mass murderers we find similarities with al-Assad.

Saddame Hussein, for example, was raised absent a father who is believed to have died before his birth whereas al-Assad’s father was also absent but due to his commitments as President of Syria. Hitler was neglected and beaten as a young child by his father who died when he was young; he also lost his younger brother at an early age. Bashar al-Assad lost his brother, who died in 1994 and as a result Bashar was elevated to the position of his father’s successor.

Bashar suffered abuse and bullying from his older brother Bassel growing up. Joseph Stalin is another example of a brutal dictator who, as a child, lost siblings and whose father was absent having left the family to find work. All of these brutal dictators have several common Risk Factors during their childhood; the absence of a loving father, abuse from family members and the loss of those close to them.

There is scientific evidence that when a person’s Risk Factors outweigh their Protective Factors, they have a predisposition for a violent behavior (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). I can’t help but wonder if the bullying had been stopped and more parental attention had been given, would we have the mass causalities and daily atrocities we have today in Syria? Two of the Risk Factors for future violence would have been eliminated. Would that have been enough to tip the scales?

As the Syrian situation continues to develop and a concerted international effort to deal with the stockpile of chemical weapons under al-Assad regime control continues we await to see what will happen next in an ever-evolving situation. We may never know if Bashar may have turned out differently had he been raised differently, but what is certain is that he has now entered the annals of historic cruelty. His next move may be unknown, but his past is something we can learn from.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”~ Sir Winston Churchill

Co-authored by Dr. Kathy Seifert and Dr. Nancy Kobrin.

Please share your feedback below. I will respond to your comments! For more information, you can visit my website at www.DrKathySeifert.com.

There are so many people, professionals included, who have de-bunked Alice Miller as hysterical, emotional and pedantic.
I, for one, have appreciated her message throughout the years and she nailed sociopathy in Hitler, Stalin, Ceaucescu, Mao and others; she was so far ahead of her time, which is probably why her popularity suffered.
I appreciate your website and insights and most of all, your vital message of abuse prevention.
Thanks,
Rita Kelley

What is going on right now in Syria and Iraq is a function of ceturies of believing that one group should be in power to the exclusion of another and it is still the problem. One group maintains power through fear and brutality rather than risk sharing power between Sunni's and Shiite's. What is the answer? One group wins by killing and terrorizing those of the other group into a submissive position where they have a smaller share of the country's rich resources. It will continue until Sunni's and Shiite's can work together for the benefit of both groups. Brutality WILL beget brutality, not peace and the wellbeing of all the people of the Middle East, including women.
That is my opinion and the opinion of many.

For many Westerners, we draw the line at intentional brutality toward woman and children that are non-combatants. In the West, deliberately Killing women and children is considered by most to be brutal. It is a criminal action. Hence, why I used the term in relation to Bashar al Assad. Some in the Middle East believe that women and children are disposable and not worthy of respect or protection (called misogyny) and therefore killing them in large or small numbers such as honor killings is right and good. That is not the belief of all. Although none are perfect and it sometimes happens despite all efforst to the contrary. To many Westerners it is the intent as well as the outcome of the action that is judged.

I really don't understand where you're getting your information from. Syria is not without its problems, just like any other country, including the United States.

What you may not realize is that the majority of the Syrian population support President Assad, and this is in a majority-Sunni country. President Assad won the elections earlier this month with 88.7% of the vote. If you saw Syrians around the world going to their embassies to vote, you saw they wanted their President to remain in power to fight the terrorists. Unfortunately some western governments (like the U.S.) would not allow them to vote after closing down the Syrian embassy, so some of these Syrians traveled to Syria to vote. Now that says something, does it not?

Assad is a secular leader who doesn't believe in religious extremism. He's fighting against the wahhabi movement and takfiri groups, offshoots of Al Qaeda that are threatening to turn Syria from a secular state (and prior to the crisis the 4th safest country in the world) into an extremist state, where women must be covered up, not allowed to drive, etc.. This is why Sunni, Shia, Christians, by and large support President Assad. Additionally, many of these fighters are not even Syrian, they are foreign fighters from all over the world. How are you going to have a bunch of foreigners create a revolution in a country that's not even theirs?

As for the killing of women and children, it is very unfortunate, but there will always be innocent casualties in war. All President Assad can do is try to minimize the casualties until the terrorists are disposed of.

Additionally, the U.S. orders drone strikes on foreign land under President Obama's orders that kill innocent women and children. What do you call this? Would you refer to President Obama as a brutal dictator? Even going back to Libya in 2011, US/NATO airstrikes targeted Gaddafi and ended up killing his grandchildren, all under the age of 12. How is this acceptable by any standard? Imagine if another country did that to the U.S. --- and now with Gaddafi gone, look at Libya today. Much worse situation. What's better?

Also look at Iraq today - much worse situation. The extremist group ISIS as you may have been reading about in the news has been wreaking havoc in Iraq, including beheading children. This is the same ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq & Syria) that President Assad and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has been fighting in Syria. Going on over three years into the conflict, the SAA has been slowly getting rid of these terrorists and winning the "war", which is why they've migrated on over to Iraq.

Watch or read any interview with President Assad from the past 10 years up until the present day and you will see he has remained consistent in his beliefs. He is not a brutal dictator - he's a man who has the support of his people, who understands Syria needs to modernize and change, but also realizes it cannot be instant and that genuine progress takes time.

Just being inquisitive about >" how Assad became the bad guy " here I am...from the view point of this author, I'd be inclined to believe Barack Obama is in the same psychological mind set as Assad, and Obama is my President.
It seems strange that Assad would be re-elected with such an approval percentage. It seems likely to me that, the atrocities attributed to Bashar, could be the work of the old Republican guard sympathizers. In my mind they have stirred the pot, to the point that extremists saw the opening and ISIL is the result. These so called freedom fighters by many, received support from the US by way of Turkey, by way of left over weapons from Libya...Benghazi deal.
Moving into Iraq, these terrorists now have the weapons, that we, the US had hoped would help Iraq come into the 21st century, with a democracy of sorts. Now Obama is blaming Iraqi's military for deserting their duties and laying down their guns. Conveniently, no mention of the weaponry from Syria. It is so much more complex than people like myself can understand...with Iran and nuclear weapons and Russia and pipelines and sect against sect. Personally, I think Assad isn't the problem.

This is quite possibly the laziest personality analysis I've ever been. You can basically make the case for every single world leader (or ordinary person) and conclude that they, too, have high "risk factors". And therefore, they would be prone to violent tendencies. Like Assad, George W. Bush has a distant and successful father (HW Bush) who disapproved of him and favored his brother Jeb. Like Assad, his mother is likewise very headstrong and influential in their family affair. Like Assad, he had a sister who died young. Like Assad, he was bullied during his youth (while a male cheerleader and again while rushing a frat/secret society at Yale). Is inferiority complex the reason for his aggressive foreign policy? Like Assad, Barack Obama had little relationship with his father (who died in a car crash in Kenya at age 46), was a social outcast who wasn't even accepted by mainstream African-Americans in the prestigious Punahou School, and was raised by his white grandparents. He has such severe "daddy issue" that he entitled his first autobiography "Dreams From My Father." Is that the reason for his continued disregard for civil liberty, obsession with drone war, and lynching (without trials) of bin Laden and Gaddafi? Like Assad, Mitt Romney had an alpha male father George Romney who considered him weak (case in point: 87 year old George frequently interrupted Mitt's answer to reporters' questions in 1994 during Mitt's first campaign for US senator against Ted Kennedy). Like Assad's Alawite faith, Mitt was unpopular when he attended Stanford due to his Mormon faith and his refusal to embrace the counterculture dominant among his peers. And he ultimately transferred to Brigham Young University. Does that explain his flippant lack of compassion for the poor? Bill Clinton's father died in a car crash 3 months before his birth. At age 4, his mother married Roger Clinton and Bill took his stepfather's last name and saw him as a father figure. However, Roger was an alcoholic and frequently beat Bill's mother, which would lead a teenage Bill to intervene with physical force numerous times. Roger late died when Bill was in college and Bill's mother married hairdresser Jeff Dwire, who died 5 years later. Then she married Richard Kelley in 1982 (when Bill was already Governor of Arkansas) and died herself less than a year into Bill's presidency in 1994. Like Assad, Donald Trump had an alpha male father (legendary New York real estate developer Fred Trump) and born into a family that values ruthlessness (his grandfather, a trained barber, immigrated from Germany and made his money by engaging in nefarious activities during the Alaska Gold Rush, including running a brothel on a piece of land that didn't belong to him). Like Assad, he had an older brother who untimely died (Freddy Trump died in 1981 at age 43). Most of the aforementioned people went through experiences as traumatic (if not more traumatic) than Assad during their formative years. That doesn't make all of them the equivalent of Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein.

I found this article trying to find "Why is Assad a dictator" As western media claims daily. Semms like I can0t find any concrete evidence but just articles in western media calling him a dictator.

Where is your so called evidence to say he was behind such civilian attacks?

You should all better start asking, what's behind the scenes? why Sirya? Why Assad? Who benefits from this or that? How come a group of small terrorist become suddenly so well organized and powerful? How come they can destroy Syrian army tanks using missils that are only made in the USA? Who gave them those weapons? who is supplying them? who gives them money? why the nehgbore countries are allowing this terrorists to be suppllied?